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31 May 2006

This week our friend Leslea, the Berkeley paleontologist whose work I've written about before, came back to C-U where her career--and our friendship--started. We met each other in 2000 after discovering through the small world that is State College, PA (Cheryl Glenn lived next door to Leslea's advisor) that we'd both landed jobs at Illinois. So with PhDs from Penn State, each heading to the same campus for first jobs, we had an instant connection. And as young women from a non-ivy school and (crucially) from very different disciplines, that connection became more vital and sustaining than we could have imagined. But it got a little eerie from there: we also grew up in the same area of the country (the mid-south), went to identical seeming small public high schools, and followed similarly accidental routes to graduate school. Since Leslea studies, among other things, baboon teeth, our friend Patrick and I nicknamed her "monkey princess," and it stuck. Needless to say, yesterday when we met up, I shrieked with delight when I noticed the shoes she was wearing:

So we walked those monkey shoes around downtown C, drove by L's old place, toasted her recent NSF grant, ate mexican food, and did some major catching up. As I told Leslea when I dropped her off at the airport, if Berkeley weren't so damned good for her career, I'd be begging her to come on back for good.

[Update! If you're curious about what paleontologists do, here's a terrific Colbert interview with one. Hilarity!]

29 May 2006

Besides ending up WAY too tired here at the end of RSA, I am also a little weary of
the theme--sizing up rhetoric--which led to a few too many 'member'
jokes for this membership officer, and a few gently mocking (?*) paper
titles ["How Big is Longinus's Rhetoric"; "Whose Rhetoric is Bigger?"] that of course turned so many RSA-goers into snorting 12-year old boys. Yeah, yeah, size matters.

A bunch of us have been trying to think of a
counter-theme for the next conference, if you know what I'm saying. So far Cara has come up
with "Rhetoric's Cleavage," and there have been a few others that while a little more empowering for women, still
border on unbloggable, and I feel my judgment is too impaired from sleep deprivation to post
them at the moment. So please, post your suggestions here--including, Jenn, Richard, Blake, or Ned, the awesome but also unbloggable one we came up with at Huey's today--and we'll be
sure President-elect Selzer gets the link. Membership not required. Bourbon recommended.

*For the record, I'm reasonably certain that the second one, Josh's, is gently if not roundly mocking the theme. heh.

Sleep tank is seriously low, but intellectualy energy still buzzing here in Memphis. The Peabody lobby/bar has served as an ideal post-conference/post-checkout spot to have a beer on a comfy couch, watch a laptop slideshow of Richard's recent trip to Greece--note to self: must check out Messene next time I go--exchange last chats and goodbyes with the whole crew, one by two by one, and try not to regret having forgone the trip to Graceland with Sharon and Katherine out of sheer. exhaustion.

Earlier those two, Anne and I found the business center to be a nice respite from the duck gawkers who gather around the lobby fountain/pool for the punching in and punching out rituals. Having stayed here for four [4!] nights, I now feel quite practiced at--apologies in advance--ducking out. So I'm back in the business center using the power strip (the only free service in the room) and wondering how egregious it would be to turn out the lights and curl up over in the corner.

In all, I'd say the conference was pretty good. I've heard (and heard of) many more strong and provocative papers than not, though sadly the number of panels I was able to attend was restricted by my board duties and by the Aphthonius seminar. Highlights for me included Sunday morning's "Rhetoric of Emotion, Affect, and Common Sense" panel and the Longinus panel. And the plenary by Kirt Wilson: incredible.

I was too crazy busy to blog about the end of the Aphthonius seminar, which on the last day (oh, that was this morning) turned into a lively discussion of implementing the exercises in classes, one that has me thinking about ways Sharon and I can rework them in our textbook.

So a range of things to reflect on post-conference after rebooting my synapses.

28 May 2006

Thanks to Janet who found out about Wild Bill's, an out of the way, laid back place where taped to the juke box is a handwritten sign that says "DON'T CUT OFF." Of course that really means, "Don't cut off until the real music starts, and then you better let Wild Bill himself do it." In addition to getting a taste of real blues, we got what is known locally as "forty-fied." Sharon, Katherine, Jane, Blake, and I were all happy sharing our beer in multiples of forty, and when Jeff ordered a bourbon, he got a bottle of his own. For eight dollars.

27 May 2006

I'm happy to report more equal opportunity participation in this morning's Aphthonius seminar, or the last 1/3 of it, which is all I was able to attend thanks to an early but longish board meeting.

Less happy, and even somewhat disturbing, was a panel I attended today on teaching wherein undergraduate students in rhetoric classes were characterized variously as lazy, "semiliterate," and even--wait for it--"unwashed." Those two adjectives were actually used by 2 out of the 4 panelists. It became clear to me during the course of these two presentations that the presenters, faced with pretty undesirable teaching conditions at their universities (a 150-student classical rhetoric course is not, let's say, ideal) have allowed those conditions to ratchet up their hatred for students. I could go on--believe me, I could--but I might be tempted into disciplinary generalizations and this is probably not the right place for such. Neither, I'd say, is a professional conference the place for speaking with such vitriole about undergraduates.

When I saw the list of participants in RSA's seminar on Apthonius, it was pretty thrilling. There's a mix of period expertise as well as a nice gender and even generational balance in the room. Both my MA and PhD advisors are working on issues that come alive interestingly in Apthonius's little book of school exercises, and so they're both in the class. Women scholars whose work in ancient rhetoric I've read and/or taught for some time (e.g., Ellen Quandahl, Janet Atwill, and Susan Jarratt) are participating. I wondered with my English department head, an expert on rhetorical training and exercise in the Medieval period who is also in the seminar, that I couldn't imagine how all the people would get a chance to talk, the point here being that with so much expertise packed in the room, everyone, I assumed, would be brimming with contributions.

At our first meeting on Friday, it quickly became evident how this problem of too many awesome scholars with too much expertise would work itself out. After the lecture portion of the program, most of the discussion came from half the room: the men. My response, as I explained to friends last night over cole slaw, was to try to make up for this seeming disparity by holding out my hand and opening my mouth and then finally just interrupting people when I wanted to say something. The dynamic was a little unsettling, though I suppose it shouldn't be surprising.

It was, of course, the first day of 'class'; we were covering a lot of material, and we have some presentational components coming up today and Monday that I'm hoping will switch the dynamics a bit. I'm hoping to post my notes at some point too, but today's agenda starts pretty early so no time for anything beyond ruminating on the tired old problem of gender dynamics among historians of rhetoric.

25 May 2006

The Peabody has the right idea: just convert the lobby to a big bar and serve people drinks wherever they are. Since it's RSA, it also means that a lobby cell phone conversation can be interrupted by an empty chair at a table four feet away full of people one knows and also that one can have the privilege of watching a live--and lively--discussion between Rice and Crowley (aka Yellow Dog and Aspasia) about this.

I've decided to keep a tally of tenure toasts in Memphis. Currently it stands at 2 3.

24 May 2006

Heading down to Memphis on the train tonight, and like most conference cities, Memphis is a city I've been to, but not really been to. That is, my last time there was 14+ years ago, when my team played at Memphis State (now U of Memphis). As with most places my team visited, this means that I may have a vague memory of the inside of the arena and of getting my ankles taped in a hotel room, and that I've probably done one or two touristy things. In the case of Memphis, I think the arena was blue and silver (?) and also I have both stayed at the Peabody Hotel and eaten barbeque at the Rendezvous. I have a hazy recollection of ducks and maybe an indoor pond and a glimpse of the Mississippi which looked (at the time at least) pretty muddy. The rest of my sense of Memphis, of course, has been brought to me by movies and music; as in, John and I just watched both Walk the Line and Hustle and Flow, and so my guess is that Memphis is hard for struggling young musicians and pimps alike.

It also occurs to me, too, that experiencing cities via a conference isn't all that different from an away game or tournament: standing out to the locals, eating in large, noisy groups, and spending a lot of time inside.

23 May 2006

Apparently it's milestone week here on Michigan: Tillie caught her
first frisbee. I kept meaning to read up on methods for training whippets to catch frisbees, because the work she's been doing with tennis balls has been pretty impressive. I'm sure Ashley Whippet herself (pictured at right) has penned a book on this very topic. But John and I accidentally hit on a training method consisting of 1) desire production and 2) simulation drill that totally--almost instantly--worked. For desire production, we simply tossed the frisbee to each other, keep away style. Then when Tillie got wound up, and admittedly a little pissed off, I held the frisbee out, and she careened through the air to grab it out of my hand, simulating the mid-air catch. And I'll be damned if the next time I threw it for her she didn't catch it perfectly.

Our cheers erupted so suddenly that our neighbors must have thought we were watching the World Cup in our back yard. The best part is that when Tillie catches the frisbee, even the ever-timid, hurling object shy Jada seems to celebrate, darting out into the yard from her safe but attentive perch on the patio to touch noses with Tillie or dance around with us while Tillie circles and struts, frisbee intact.